Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 8 – The Azerbaijani
government is effectively deploying the powers of the state to block any chance
of the emergence of a Maidan-style
challenge to Baku, but its approach is not necessarily preventing the rise of
an Islamist threat to Baku, according to Moscow analyst Sergey Markedonov.
Indeed,
Markedonov who teaches religion and foreign policy at the Russian State
Humanitarian University suggests and who wrote this for an Armenian outlet,
Baku’s actions could make the latter more rather than less likely (noev-kovcheg.ru/mag/2014-08/4476.html
reposted at kavkazoved.info/news/2014/05/07/suverennaja-demokratia-po-alievski-ne-podrazumevaet-vozmozhnost-majdana.html).
The
events in Ukraine, Markedonov says, “are testing the entire system of
international relations and the configuration of the space which appeared after
the disintegration of the at one time single Soviet government.” Among the
questions, the Ukraine crisis raises are “are border changes among former
Soviet republics possible?” and “can Maidan technology be a universal means for
the victory of opposition forces over the authorities?”
No
country in the post-Soviet space is more concerned about any possibility that
borders may be changed than is Azerbaijan, the Moscow scholar says, given the Karabakh
conflict. That explains both Baku’s backing of Kyiv on the status of Crimea and
its cautious words and actions lest the Russian Federation increase its support
for Armenia.
Azerbaijan
and Ukraine have many other common interests including energy transit, but they
do not share the same view on the Maidan or any Maidan-like actions. Baku has long been worried about the dangers
such movements present. In fact, “this term was first used in the Eurasian
context [as] a synonym for civil opposition activity” in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijanis
used it to describe the 18-day meeting in Baku from November 17 to December 8,
1988, that helped bring to power the Peoples Front, led to violent Soviet
intervention in January 1990, and kept Azerbaijan relatively unstable for
several years, “almost leading to the complete collapse of [this] new
independent state.”
Many
Azerbaijani critics of Baku’s crackdown on opposition figures forget that “the
Aliyev regime arose in response to this chaos and developed in reaction to what
Markedonov calls “the mini-Maidans” in Azerbaijan in 2003 and 2005.” Baku’s current actions, he says, reflect its
concern about what the opposition’s admiration for Ukraine’s Maidan could mean.
This
raises the question, Markedonov continues: “could the Kyiv scenario be repeated
on the streets of Baku?” While he says
it is “premature” to answer definitively, the Moscow writer suggests that it is
unlikely. On the one hand, the regime has taken a hard line against the opposition.
And on the other, the opposition is weaker and more divided than in Ukraine.
But
that does not mean that Azerbaijan does not face a threat, albeit from a
different direction. Unlike Ukraine, Azerbaijan
is a Muslim country, “and in any such country, the danger exists of the spread
of radical versions of Islam. And these risk increase when the civic opposition
is weak and divided.”
That
is because, Markedonov says, “the lack of a strong opposition does not
automatically indicate the complete satisfaction [of the entire population]
with the situation in the country. And spontaneous actions on various occasions
[such as in Ismaily last year) are clear testimony of that.”
The
Moscow analyst thus concludes that today, there is no real threat of a Maidan-2
in Azerbaijan. “But the dangers of radical Islamization and of mass actions
from ‘the bazaar and the mosque’ remain, despite all the reports and
declarations of the authorities about stability” in that “independent Caucasus
state.”
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